Growing Up...

Things that made me grow up...

1. "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" - Salman Rushdie

~ My old English teacher gave me this book for my 13th birthday and I've read it every year since then, each time finding something new to relate to, a joke I had missed, a subtle reference that was too clever previously... a story about family that I appreciated at the times I needed it most.  Above all, it put a smile on my face.

2. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - Robert M. Pirsig

~ Helped my get over my cynical days... a period where I thought the world owed me happiness, that I was entitled to it simply being alive.  Although this book has nothing to do with Zen and little to do with motorcycles for that matter, it is what got me interested in contemporary Japanese literature.

3. "The Romantics" - Pankaj Mishra

I hated his first book, "Butter Chicken in Ludhiana".  It was a wannabe Khushwant Singh and it failed miserably.  Then I met Pankaj Mishra.  He was roommates with my old literature teacher at JNU and I saw a lot of myself in his experiences.  So I gave his second novel a shot and I felt I shed a lifetime of naivete.  No one I have recommended the book to has ever loved it, perhaps you wont too, but to me it was a watershed moment.  My autographed copy of the book was stolen on a train in 2007... I haven't read it since then, but its lessons are etched in where they matter.

4. "The Catcher in the Rye" - J.D. Salinger

~ Perhaps the most famous coming of age story.  I never understood it the first time I read it in high school, perhaps in A form.  But now when I see it on my book shelf, much thumbed and dog eared, it reminds me of an old friend who is always there with a warm hug and sage advice... I don't need to read it again.  It taught me it's okay not to know what to do and to be scared.  That's more than I could ask for.

5. The Poems of Pablo Neruda

~ What can I say, the man understood love and socks.

6. "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" - Oe Kenzaburo

~ Scared me.  Put my world in perspective.  Made me realize how often humanity is missing from humans, yet how quickly we learn to laugh and love again; and how much brighter little specks of happiness shine the darker the backdrop.  Oe wrote this at my age... how little I understand.  Can the fear of impending destruction be made poetic?  Can violence be poetic?  Sadat Hasan Manto did so with "Black Margins"... now Oe has done so with this.

7. "In My Life" - The Beatles

~ My favorite Beatles song that was the soundtrack of my life during the cold walks across the Thames from Bankside to LSE.

8. "Big Fish" - Dir. Tim Burton

~ When this movie came out Nikhat Kazmi wrote R.I.P Tim Burton in her review for the film.  I have never trusted reviews since then.  I watched this film on my own in an empty theater in Satyam in Delhi at 10 am during the middle of Jan tests at Stephens'.  The film made me appreciate stories and the joy of hearing and sharing stories.  It made me want to tell stories, to make people laugh at the oddities of life, to weave together the real with the fantastic, to pay attention to the details, to fill in the gaps with tall tales...

9. "Ikiru" - Dir. Akira Kurosawa
~ (trans. "To Live")  This lesser known movie by Kurosawa is perhaps one of his best, I mean apart from "Rashomon" of course, but "Rashomon" did not shake my understanding of life like "Ikiru" did.  I watched this movie when I was reading Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Illych" for Professor Ceballes' Philosophy 115 class at Hamilton and I remember my paper on "Death" got an A+... it was all raw emotion evoked by "Ikiru".

(To be continued...)